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"We can find someone else," I said.
"Yeah? Who? Who can we trust with this?" Huck asked, sounding like he was on-board with putting Sass in harm's way plan.
"If this was Harmon, would you be so gung-ho to put her in the driver's seat?" I shot back.
"Harm doesn't do this shit as a profession. It's different. She could handle it. She's been doing this for years. I'm not saying to force her into it. I'm saying you ask her, see what she says. If she's not up for it, fine. We can go back to your plan, or find another wheelman. You were just saying an hour ago that you want this shit over with. We all do. This would be the fastest way."
"I hate this," I admitted, jaw tight.
"Noted," Huck agreed.
"Even if she agreed, we don't have wheels anymore," I reminded them. "It would have to be a car with a backseat and light enough to get away fast."
"I can find one," Seeley said, because of course he could. He had every kind of contact known to criminal-kind.
"We will all head into Miami," Huck said. "Seeley, Remy, and McCoy can head off to find the car. You and me, we can go to Teddy's," he said, and I knew he'd set it up that way, so he could check in with his woman and his sister. "I know," Huck went on, looking at Remy, nodding. "Shore up the animals as best you can. This isn't ideal, but if we can get this in the works, we might be able to be done with it by tomorrow night."
"They can't go that long," Remy insisted, jaw tight. "The dogs, at least," he added. "I can make it work for everyone else, but the dogs can't just be left."
"How hospitable do you think we can ask Teddy to be?" Huck asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
"He likes them," Remy insisted. "But we need to get them there."
"Roll the dice," McCoy said, looking over at Huck. "Ask a random Uber guy to show up, or one of Teddy's drivers."
"An Uber would be faster if we can find one that is cool with the dogs," Huck said.
"I'll see what I can do," Seeley said, reaching for his phone as Remy moved off to put out extra food and water for the animals we would need to leave behind, clearly not happy about it, but knowing the cats practically didn't notice if we weren't around, and that the bird and the tortoise would be safe in their cage and enclosure.
Twenty minutes later, Remy was squeezing into an Uber with the dogs, and the rest of us were following behind at a respectable distance, strapped as heavily as we could be on the open road, and hopefully on our way to handle the situation we'd been dealing with on and off for years.
"Be pissed at me later," Huck suggested on the elevator ride up to Teddy's. "Be rational now."
"I'm going to have a hard time forgiving all of us if something happens to her."
"So don't let something happen to her," he said, moving into the apartment, making a beeline for Harmon's room while I made my way toward Saskia's.
She was out cold on the bed. I tried to tell myself that I wanted to wake her up gently, not startle her, that was why I kicked out of my shoes and climbed in with her. But I knew the truth. I just wanted to be close to her for as long as I could.
I got maybe ten minutes of her warm, soft body against mine before she started to wake up, confused for a moment, then whispering out my name.
"Yeah."
"Are you..."
"It's not over," I told her, ripping off that band-aid.
"Oh."
"That's why we're here," I told her, fingers tracing down her arm. "We need to talk to you."
"About what?" she asked, sounding instantly awake, body starting to tense.
Sucking in a deep breath, I launched right into it, wanting to get it over with. "Seeley and Huck have a plan that I don't like, but it involves you."
"Me?"
"As a wheelman," I clarified.
"Oh," she said, and I couldn't tell if that was a good or bad sound.
"I don't want you to do it."
"Why not?"
"Because I've already put you at risk enough," I told her, giving her a squeeze. "We have another plan. But I told Huck I would talk to you. So now I have. And I can tell him we are going to go with the other plan."
"I want to do it," she declared.
"No."
"That's not how this works," she said, turning onto her back to look up at me. "You don't get to make my decisions."
"I don't like the plan," I told her.
"And maybe I won't either. I don't take every job I'm offered, Che. Sometimes the clients are idiots. I won't put myself at risk because of their lack of planning. So, maybe Huck is being an idiot. Only I can tell him if that's true. But I need to hear it first."
